The Guardians of Zoone Read online

  Fidget caught Ozzie scowling. “What did you expect? It leads to the wild lands.”

  After a half hour’s trek, they saw a light shining from the end of the tunnel. The door was propped open, just like the one on the Creon side, so that the conveyors could trundle through.

  “Do you smell that?” Tug declared, inhaling deeply. “Fresh air!”

  The skyger bounded ahead, through the doorway. Ozzie and the others followed to find him sitting on a wide plateau of rock, gulping in breaths of air.

  “This must be what it’s like to smell Breathe-Eazzy,” Tug announced as he flexed his wings, then bounded off the ledge.

  Tug circling against a backdrop of blue sky should have been a joyful sight, but Ozzie couldn’t help frowning. Yes, the skies were clear, but the landscape below was devastated. Round hills stretched into the horizon; they might have once been beautiful, Ozzie thought, but now they were gray and pocked with tree stumps.

  “There used to be trees here,” Cho murmured, coming up behind Ozzie. “So many trees. It’s been wiped clean.”

  “They’re not quite done with this place yet,” Fidget said.

  She gestured to the conveyor belts and Ozzie’s gaze followed their route down a slope and into a gaping hole in the ground.

  “It’s a mine shaft,” Cho said. “The motos have harvested the forest; now they’ll take the minerals.”

  “Fifty-eight motos in this world,” Scoot reported, her antennae rising and retracting. “But they’re all deepy-deep.”

  “You mean underground?” Fidget asked.

  “That’s right! Up-down-up-up-down.”

  “Why do you always say that?” Fidget grumbled. “You really do have a loose circuit in your head.”

  “It’s a signal,” Scoot said. “Creator told me never to forget it.” She swiveled her head expectantly toward Ozzie.

  “Don’t ask me,” Ozzie said. “I keep telling you, I’m not the one who built you.”

  “The motos have detected me,” Scoot said, her antennae cycling again. “But they move slowy-slow. They’re hours away.”

  “Let’s keep it that way,” Cho advised as he began down the slope. “We head due east. Come on, everyone; at least the empty hills will make it easier to chart our way.”

  “Da-dah-da-dooo!” Scoot trumpeted.

  “Keep it down, Sprocket-Brain,” Fidget snapped as she picked her way down the hill.

  “Oh!” Scoot cried. “I like that! Can I be Sprocket-Brain, Creator?”

  “NO!” Ozzie said firmly.

  Ozzie was not used to trekking through the wilderness. He and Aunt Temperance had once walked twenty blocks after her car had sputtered to a halt on the way home from an art gallery, but that journey had involved paved sidewalks lined with cafés, benches, and shady trees. In Untaar, there were just cleanly shorn stumps and a sun that beat down on him like it had a personal grudge to settle.

  They traveled for three days across the bleak landscape. Every time they rounded a hill, Ozzie thought they might see an end to the clear-cut and find the start of untouched forest. But the motos’ destruction reached across the entire land. They encountered no animals or birds, just the odd butterfly that decided that Ozzie’s hair was the perfect place to perch.

  They scavenged for mushrooms or berries when they could, but mostly they survived by drinking from Cho’s canteen. They spent their nights beneath rocky overhangs or in caves carved into the hills.

  It was in one such cave that they found the message. Using the wood litter left behind by the lumber operation, Scoot had built a small fire in the opening of the cave, and the flames picked out a few lines etched into the rocky walls.

  “Hieroglyphs of some sort,” Aunt Temperance guessed. “I wonder what they say.” She fished her flashlight from her pack and shone it directly on the words.

  “A message from an Untaari clan,” Cho said, tracing his hand along one of the lines.

  “You can read this language?” Aunt Temperance asked in surprise.

  Cho nodded. “My homeland borders Untaar; our languages are similar.”

  “What does it say, Cho?” Ozzie asked.

  “It speaks of a great tragedy,” Cho translated soberly. “A ‘metal scourge.’”

  “The motos,” Fidget gasped.

  Cho nodded. “According to this, many of the Untaari were taken by the metal men. Stolen. In desperation, those who remained—the survivors—went into hiding. I’m not sure what became of this clan. There’s no more to the message.”

  “The people are gone,” Fidget murmured. “And the animals, too.”

  “Even the tusk bear,” Cho added mournfully. “They used to roam these hills. I’ve seen them; magnificent creatures.”

  Tug slumped to the ground. Even in the faint light, Ozzie could see his fur fading to a gloomy gray. “Just to tell you,” the skyger said, “on the TV, the stories have much happier endings.”

  “Yeah, well, those stories aren’t real,” Fidget retorted.

  “I know,” Tug admitted with a woeful twitch of his tail. “But I wish they were.”

  18

  Hunters of Magic

  They set out early the next morning, all of them irritable after another night on the hard ground—all of them except Scoot, who didn’t require sleep, and Tug, who didn’t seem to care where he snoozed.

  “The hills are flattening out,” Aunt Temperance observed an hour into their trek. “The trees have been harvested here, too, but the stumps are thinner. They must be a different variety.”

  “How fascinating,” Fidget remarked sarcastically. “Look, everyone. This type of dead tree is different than the other dead trees.”

  “She’s just trying to point out that the landscape is changing,” Ozzie said.

  Fidget snorted. “And I’m just trying to point out it doesn’t matter.”

  “It mattered to the trees,” Tug chimed in.

  That put an end to the argument, and Ozzie was left alone with his thoughts. They weren’t exactly good ones. With every step, they were getting closer to Ru-Valdune, the place he had heard so much about from Cho. The place where the captain had lost his fingers. Gotten his scar. And been expelled by his clan. Ozzie could sense that these things were on Cho’s mind, too. The normally jovial captain didn’t utter a word until they arrived at a wide and roaring river, late in the morning.

  “The boundary between Untaar and Ru-Valdune,” Cho said grimly.

  Ozzie stared at the bleak landscape on the other side of the river. Ru-Valdune looked like a desert, sparsely covered with trees, scrub vegetation, and towering rock formations that jutted upward like crooked bones.

  “Did the motos get their claws on it already?” Ozzie wondered.

  Cho gave him a mirthless smile. “It’s not the motos’ doing, lad. Rocks and cacti: That’s Ru-Valdune. We’ll follow the river north, to Yo-Kando. We can safely pass through its mountain valleys, then snake back down to the Land of Thrak. That’s where we’ll find a doorway out of the wild lands.”

  “Wouldn’t it be quicker to cross here?” Ozzie asked.

  Cho emphatically shook his head. “Ru-Valdune is too dangerous.”

  “It can’t be more dangerous than Moton,” Fidget argued.

  “That’s the territory of the Nedra across the river,” Cho said with a passionate gesture. “If their sabermage—”

  “Sabermage?” Aunt Temperance cut in.

  “The member of the clan who hunts magic,” Ozzie explained.

  “He will smell your magic,” Cho told her.

  Aunt Temperance stiffened. “I don’t have any magic.”

  “I can smell it,” Cho insisted. “On you, on Ozzie—all of you.”

  “Cho,” Ozzie began, “why—”

  “I can’t tell you why,” the captain said with an uncharacteristic hint of frustration in his voice. “Just that I can smell it. And if I can, so will the Nedra’s sabermage.”

  Aunt Temperance crossed her arms. “Can’t you neg
otiate our way across?”

  “I am Y’Orrick,” Cho said quietly. “Banished.”

  “Why?”

  Ozzie groaned at her bluntness. “I’ve told you before, Aunt T. Cho abandoned the ways of the Nedra. They think a sabermage gets his magic by stealing it from others.”

  “Oh,” Aunt Temperance said, slowly comprehending. “What you really mean is by killing them. The sabermage would kill us.” She narrowed her gaze at Cho. “Your people are barbarians!”

  “No, they’re not,” Fidget spoke up. “Most of the Valdune clans changed their customs eons ago.”

  “But not the Nedra,” Aunt Temperance said.

  “No,” Cho conceded. “Not the Nedra. Which is why we must take the long way.”

  “But, Cho,” Fidget said, “shouldn’t we try warning your people? Or help them? They can’t defeat the mo—”

  “They will not accept our help,” Cho cut her off. “Let’s remember: We’re trying to save Zoone. If we can do that, we save the entire multiverse—and that includes Ru-Valdune.”

  He turned and began marching north along the riverbank. Aunt Temperance hesitated, arms still crossed.

  “It’s not true, you know,” Ozzie told her. “A sabermage doesn’t need to kill anyone. Cho has magic in his sword, but he doesn’t hunt for it. He never has. He just is . . .”

  “What?” Aunt Temperance prodded.

  “Magical,” Ozzie finished. “That’s what I think anyway.”

  “Me, too,” Tug added. “Just to tell you, I’ve known him my whole life.”

  Aunt Temperance stared at Cho for what felt like an interminable moment before finally exhaling a long breath. “I guess we’ve got another long march ahead of us. But, just to tell you, I could really use a cup of tea.”

  Near midafternoon, they came upon a wooden bridge stretching across the river. It had no rails or ornamentation, but it did look sturdy. And new.

  “I don’t remember this being here,” Cho said, tentatively stepping onto the bridge. “That’s Yo-Kando on the other side, but . . .”

  “The motos built it, didn’t they?” Ozzie guessed.

  Cho slowly nodded. “This looks like machine-made construction. Motos can’t swim; perhaps they built this bridge to aid their invasion.”

  Scoot’s antennae telescoped up and down. “Zero motos in the vicinity,” she reported.

  “Good; let’s cross,” Cho decided.

  He led the way onto the bridge and Scoot brought up the rear. Ozzie kept to the center of the planks, away from the open sides. He had been known to trip—literally—on a dime and, even though it wasn’t a long drop to the river, the water was swift and swirling. Plus, he could hear the telltale rumbling of a nearby waterfall.

  “It’s called Unta’s Roar,” Cho said when he saw Ozzie’s expression. “You don’t want to go over it.”

  “Ozzie?” Tug said, ears twitching. “Someone’s coming.”

  “Motos?” They weren’t even halfway across the bridge.

  “No, I think it’s people!”

  A gigantic rock hurtled from overhead and crashed into the bridge, splintering the wood at Cho’s feet. For a moment, the captain teetered at the edge of the gaping hole in front of him, arms flailing and reaching in vain for the nonexistent railing. Then he toppled through and into the rapids below.

  Ozzie watched in horror as the captain was swept toward the falls. There was nothing for Cho to cling to—not a rock, a branch, not anything. Ozzie turned to Tug, but the skyger was already in a crouch, preparing to launch.

  That was as far as he got. Something whipped past Ozzie’s head; he saw a flash of metal, then heard Tug caterwaul in pain. The skyger collapsed, one of his wings pinned to the deck of the bridge by a long spear. Screaming, Ozzie rushed to the cat’s side, wrapped his hands around the shaft of the weapon, and began trying to frantically yank it free.

  “You’re okay, you’re okay,” Ozzie murmured. But there were feathers everywhere—and blood. Lots of blood.

  “It’s the Nedra!” Fidget screamed.

  Ozzie jumped to his feet and whirled to see a pack of men emerge out of the landscape. They were carrying an assortment of weapons, including boulder-sized rocks. Ozzie couldn’t even comprehend how much strength it would take to throw one of them so far. That was superhero strength.

  But the Nedra looked more like Vikings than superheroes. Some of them were bare-chested, with muscles bulging across their limbs and torsos and, as they approached, Ozzie could see that they wore their hair in topknots and braids, like Cho usually did. But that was where the similarities ended. They radiated hostility, the exact opposite of the captain.

  “How—why are they here?” Ozzie panicked. “This isn’t Ru-Valdune!”

  “Look out!” Aunt Temperance cried as the warrior in the lead hurled another rock. Ozzie ducked, but the rock sailed over his head, striking Scoot in the belly with so much force that she went flying backward with a metallic scream. She spun off the bridge and back onto Untaari soil, where she slammed into a tall boulder.

  “Ouchy . . . ouchy . . . ,” the moto groaned, clutching at the giant dent in her body. Then her voice warbled to a halt and her eyes fizzled out. Ozzie could just make out her battery—Aunt Temperance’s ring—sitting on the parched ground next to her. It had been knocked right out of her socket.

  “W-we have to run,” Aunt Temperance stammered. She was shaking like her blender on full nutritional-vitamin-shake mode.

  But it was too late to run—the Nedra were already upon them. They pulled off Aunt Temperance’s bag, kicked it aside, and quickly bound her wrists and ankles. Two others handled Fidget and Ozzie, tying them up and throwing them over their shoulders, while the rest of the warriors converged upon Tug. Ozzie watched helplessly as they wrenched the spear from the skyger’s wing—causing the cat to wail in agony—and bound him to a long pole.

  Ozzie managed to steal a last look behind him before they were ferried into the scrub. Scoot was lying against the boulder, rigid and dormant. And in the roiling river beyond, there was no trace of Cho.

  I’m never going to complain about walking again, Ozzie thought as he bounced on the shoulder of the warrior spiriting him through the wilderness.

  The Nedra were moving at such a hurried pace that Ozzie’s stomach was in the air half the time—the other half, it was smacking against the warrior’s shoulder. Ozzie knew that part of the shoulder wasn’t called the blade—but as far as he was concerned, it should have been. Each time he landed against it, he felt like he was being stabbed in the gut.

  Still, it was nothing compared to the pain he felt every time his mind wandered to thoughts of Cho. Ozzie could imagine finding his way back to Scoot and plugging in her battery to bring her back to life. But Cho had disappeared over the waterfall. There was no sort of battery to bring him back.

  The Nedra didn’t stop to rest, not even when they crossed into the deserts of Ru-Valdune. They simply carried on beneath the shadows of the towering, bone-shaped rocks. Eventually, they arrived at a mountainside with a peculiar cave mouth at its base. And “mouth” was the key word; the entrance had been skillfully carved into the enormous skull of a dragon, with blunted rock teeth jutting from the top and bottom. They were so realistic that they made Ozzie shiver as he was carried beneath them and into the winding slot canyon beyond. Strange pillars curved up on each side.

  It’s like entering a dragon’s throat, Ozzie thought.

  It was a long throat—so long that Ozzie drifted off. The next thing he knew, he was being lashed to some sort of column. The men prowled away, leaving him to blink and look around.

  They were in an arena, and not the good kind where players kick a ball back and forth. This was more like a gladiator pit. The ground in the middle was sand, but beyond was a ring of steps hewn from the rock and radiating outward. More warriors were standing at the perimeter, like guards. Beyond the steps was a continuous wall of rock, dotted with doorways and windows. A line of more pointed co
lumns, like the one Ozzie was tied to, curled up the rock face.

  Is this where Cho grew up? Ozzie wondered. It was hard to imagine children in a place like this, though; as he glanced around, he realized there were no children about—no women, either. Maybe the Nedra keep them hidden away, Ozzie thought. So they won’t see what’s going to happen to us.

  He turned his attention to the others. Aunt Temperance and Fidget were bound to the pillars on either side of him, while Tug was sprawled on the ground in front of Ozzie, his feet hobbled by rope. The skyger’s fur was a sickly green color, matted with prickly burrs and thorns. His wounded wing, crusted with dry blood, hung awkwardly at his side.

  “Tug?” Ozzie asked hoarsely, his throat dry as sand. “Are you okay?”

  “I think my wing is broken,” the skyger mewled.

  “I wish I could help you,” Aunt Temperance said sympathetically. “I have a first aid kit in my bag, but those troglodytes left it on the bridge.”

  “What now?” Ozzie wondered.

  “The ritual will start soon,” Fidget replied. “You know, the one where the sabermage siphons the magic out through our nostrils and we all die an excruciatingly painful death?”

  “Let’s try to be positive,” Aunt Temperance recommended.

  “Fine,” Fidget retorted. “I’m one hundred percent positive that we’re going to die in this pit of death. Don’t you think it’s kind of hard to be upbeat when we’re surrounded by petrified bones?”

  Ozzie grimaced. “Bones? What bones?”

  “We’re tied to them, Quogglebrain.”

  “What?” Ozzie cried. “That wasn’t a carving where we came in? It was an actual skull?”

  “Yes,” Fidget insisted. “And the bones here are part of the animal’s rib cage. Those ones going up the wall? That was the tail. This entire complex was built around the skeleton.”